The CHALLENGE
Glory and Magnificent fight to the death instead of doing a competition. Or A story that starts off kind of serious but quickly descends into crackfic territory as soon as the battle begins Written by ChrispyCookie “Queen Magnificent of the RainWings, I challenge you for the throne of the RainWings.” “You mean you want a turn at being queen?” said Magnificent, turning her head in a puzzled way. “I’m sure that could be arranged, if you insist. I can talk to the others and try to fit you in between Grandeur and Exquisite next year.” “No, I need to be queen now,” said Glory “Because if you won’t rescue those RainWings, I will, whatever it takes. Even if it means taking the throne from you.” “Oh wow,” Kinkajou breathed. “I don’t see how you could possibly do that,” said Queen Magnificent. She looked down and started rearranging one of her flower necklaces. “It’s not very complicated,” Glory said. “We fight. Whoever survives gets to be queen.” The other RainWings in the room all gasped. The queen’s scales shimmered white and green. “You would kill another dragon just so you could be queen?” “That’s how it works in every other tribe,” Glory pointed out. “Not here,” said Magnificent. “That’s barbaric. That’s not the RainWing way” “As far as I can tell, the RainWing way is to lie around and do nothing,” Glory snapped. “So why don’t you do that, and I’ll just go ahead and be queen. After all, no one really wants the job, right?” “Maybe I don’t want you to have it,” said the queen with a growl. “There is an old tradition,” interjected the ancient dragon suddenly. “If anyone wants to hear about it.” “No one likes your old stories, Handsome,” Magnificent snapped. She looked down for a moment to think, twirling her flower necklace in her talons. The queen’s scales were slowly going back to purple as she pondered over Glory’s demands. “So, can I take the throne?” Glory asked. “You’re doing nothing like you always do, so just keep doing that and I’ll take it from here.” A flash of red appeared in the queen’s scales. “No,” Magnificent said suddenly. “I won’t give you the throne. I will not let some dragonet take this from me.” Why should she, anyway? The throne was shared, but it was still hers. Who was Glory to think she would just lie down and give her all that she had? All of her royal possessions and privileges? The thought of the challenge terrified her, but it would be shameful to back down so easily. “So you want to fight.” Glory said.“Are you sure? One of us will die.You could die” “I could also win. I’m older and bigger than you,” She stood up on her feet. “And I have a lot more supporters than you.” Glory tilted her head at the queen’s sudden confidence. “Have you ever killed a dragon?” Glory asked. “Have you?” Magnificent retorted, her ruff turning crimson. Glory hesitated. She believed she wouldn’t have a problem killing a dragon, but she never actually killed anyone. True, she attacked Scarlet with the intent of killing her, but she didn’t die. Could she kill Magnificent? The queen wasn’t evil and unlike Scarlet, Magnificent never did anything bad. Glory’s mind flashed back to the RainWings trapped in the Night Kingdom. No, she thought. Ignoring her subjects while they are captured and tortured is just as evil. She shot Queen Magnificent a glare with a clear message. You’ll be my first kill. Magnificent glared right back, turning her ruff into a violent shade of red. “So it’s decided. We will fight,” Glory said. She squared her shoulders. “Where shall we do this?” Handsome stepped out of the line of RainWings, which was frozen for the whole conversation. “Your Majesty,” he said. “Please listen. You might want to consider the old method-” “Oh, put a fruit in it.” Magnificent interrupted. The rest of her body shifted to crimson. Her eyes were fixed on Glory’s as she said, “Tell everyone to go to the Arboretum tomorrow after suntime. Tell them I am going to show the village what happens when someone messes with my stuff” Over the day she had before the challenge, Magnificent came to realize what a stupid decision it was to accept the challenge. She was going to have to fight! To the death! Her level of panic had rose so much that she couldn’t sleep during suntime and was completely green when she entered the Arboretum. She tried asking the other queens for help, but at the mention of possible death, all of them turned green and ran away. All except for Grandeur, who answered with a burn so sick that Magnificent had to run away. She had to come up with a way to get away alive. She called Coconut over to her palace... ... The next day, everyone in the village gathered to see what would be the first violent activity as far as most of the village could remember. Most of them didn’t even know what a challenge was and were there for the prospect of entertainment. The rest were forced to go by Magnificent’s threat of taking away suntime for a week from anyone who doesn’t attend the challenge. “The royal challenge begins in THREE! TWO-” Before Handsome could finish counting down, Magnificent disappeared. Glory roared in fury and immediately started spraying her venom everywhere, hoping to land a drop on the cowardly queen. Unfortunately, since she never had shooting practice, some of her venom landed on Handsome and he started screaming in pain. The RainWings gasped upon seeing this act of violence. “Oh my gosh! She’s mad! That dragonet is going to kill all of us!” shouted Bromeliad while the spectators stared in shock. Upon hearing these words, chaos erupted. The RainWings took off in panic, fleeing away from the angry red monster in the arena. They followed what Magnificent did and turned invisible as well. Unfortunately, since none of them could really see each other and there was a high volume of RainWings in a small airspace, wings and talons smashed into each other and created a traffic jam. Meanwhile, Glory was still spraying venom like a lawn sprinkler while flying around madly, which unfortunately killed a few hundred fleeing RainWings. The air was screaming while Magnificent was nowhere to be found. Probably dead by now. The sounds attracted a nearby group of screaming monkeys, who screamed along happily from the trees, causing the invisible RainWings to panic even more and accidentally beat up some of their friends. Some of those friends soon stopped screaming. All the noise and commotion just made Glory even more furious and fit Bromeliad’s description of her perfectly. Coconut, high after eating a tree full of smokeberries, flew over to sell some “not-boring food” from the big hammock he somehow had enough energy to carry. He was wearing a flag that had “LOOK! A DISTRACTION!” written on it and was immediately spotted by Glory. “COCONUT!” she yelled, “This is not the time to be selling weird treats! I need to kill Magnificent!” “Whoa, chill,” said Coconut. “Maybe if you try some of the stuff I have in this bag, you’ll feel better. It’s guaranteed to not taste boring! Like this little berry here ‘ll make you hear sounds that-” “COCONUT! If you don’t shut up NOW, I will-” Instead of saying “shoot venom in your face,” Glory just went ahead and did that literally because she was so extremely annoyed. Coconut’s hammock unfortunately had some dragonflame cactuses smuggled from the Sky Kingdom and a drop of Glory’s venom made the whole arena explode in flames, as well as filling it with interesting fumes originating from other things in Coconut’s hammock. Flaming masses of air rained down to the ground, while the surviving RainWings became high from the smoke and changed into weird colours. Glory shot down everything that was green like Magnificent was. A few others breathed in some stuff that made them turn into venom sprinklers too, increasing the rate of death in the arena as the symphony of monkeys screamed their heads off to the beat of the flames. Little did anyone know, there was a NightWing spy watching from a distance the whole time. Seeing this situation unfold terrified her more than anything in her life. Her hand shook as she wrote down: “The RainWings are bloodthirsty and more dangerous than we expected. Release the prisoners immediately or they will destroy us. We cannot take this risk. Abort the RainWing invasion plan immediately. ” At the end of the day, half of the rainforest was burned down with no more RainWings in sight. The ones that survived the disaster were so shocked that they stayed invisible and hidden for the rest of their lives, never to be seen again. Only a small handful were still normal. Queen Grandeur, who was calmly spectating from the Arboretum seats for the whole event, applauded. She approved of Glory as a queen, saying she taught the RainWings what happens when they lose their survival instincts. Coconut, now without most of his face, miraculously survived. He scavenged a few leaves and crushed berries left over from his hammock, shoved them into a pouch, and flew off to who knows where. Probably to wherever he got his non-boring food from. Kinkajou, Mangrove, and Tamarin were still sitting next to each other in the audience, mouths hanging open and frozen. They stayed frozen for a couple of days. Glory finally calmed down and was very happy to see the captured RainWings return. They were pretty confused at the burnt forest, but hey, it was better than the Night Kingdom. That place made them hardy. They also informed Glory that the NightWings will leave them alone forever and also give a few hundred pounds of treasure as a peace offering. Also Deathbringer as a sacrifice. Glory eventually rebuilt the RainWing Kingdom into a great empire with Deathbringer, her little group of loyal subjects, and the treasure from the NightWings. She also got Coconut to help with exporting rainforest goods and growing the kingdom’s economy. Life was looking bright for the RainWing tribe. THE END Oh, and the rest of the dragonets of destiny fled the rainforest and were told by some NightWing that the prophecy was “cancelled”. They were kind of mad about that. Category:Fanfictions Category:Fanfictions (Semi-Canon) Category:Fanfictions (Completed)